Hint for People that have Called to Reserve Movies

When you call a movie rental store and reserve movies, don’t come into the store later and bring the movies that you called to reserve to the counter.  I’m going to let you in on a secret.  When you call to reserve the movies, the employees at the store pull those movies from the shelf so that you can just walk up to the counter when you come in and pick them up.  This negates the chore of actually looking for and bring to the counter, those movies.  I realize that this is a hard concept to grasp, but I am telling the truth.

Stupid Questions

A customer came into the store.  She had a puzzled look on her face, denoting to us that she had no clue what she was doing.  Seems that her son had purchased a laptop at a (nationally recognized retailer) and was wondering if we had the disc to connect to the Internet.  Wow that must be some disc!

We tried to establish how she was connecting to the Internet.  Do you have broadband?  I don’t know.  Do you have dial-up?  I don’t know.  Is your computer connected thru some kind of box that your Internet provider brought out?  We live in the country, if that helps.  Oh, do you have satellite Internet?  I don’t know.  Do you have a dish style antenna on your house that isn’t used for TV?  I think so, but I’m not sure.  Do you have Wyldblue?  It was blue something, but they came out and changed it.  Maybe it is HughesNet?  I don’t know, but it was blue something and then they came out and changed it to something else.

As you can see we were making little to NO progress!

She did tell us that the laptop connected wirelessly and that you could use the Internet and talk on the phone at the same time.  So we assumed that she had broadband.

The conversation went back and forth like this for about 15 minutes.  It was obvious that we were wasting out time, but I guess we were not busy.  We finally had to tell her that we didn’t have any disc that would connect her to the Internet.  She was going to have to connect herself.  She was going to have to figure out her computer if she wanted to use to Internet.  Plan B was to bring the thing in for a demonstration or something, but I had serious doubts as to our chances of that even being successful.  She would call back and say she couldn’t get it to work as soon as she got home.

The Customer is Always Right

I know that the old saying is, “The customer is always right”, but anyone who has worked in retail knows that this saying is incorrect.  It should be “The customer is sometimes right” or “The customer might be right”.  The only thing I know for sure is that the customer is not “always” right.  They can’t be.

Here is an example.  The currents owners of this store have owned it since 2001.  When they took over the store the POS was changed and all records of customer purchases prior to 2001 are in the possession of the previous owners.  So, anytime a person comes in that purchased something from this store before 2001, we can’t tell them anything about it.

A “customer” came in who, at some point before 2001, had purchased a refrigerator.  He wanted one that was comparable to the one that he had, but he didn’t know what brand it was, what size it was, or what the model number was.  Basically all he could tell us was that it was white and that it was indeed a refrigerator.  We looked on his account for previous appliance purchases and found a purchase for a 6cf refrigerator, but that was not the one that he was looking for.  We asked him if he could go get the make and model of the refrigerator, but he just wanted to argue.  He insisted that the owner had delivered the appliance, so we had to have a record of it.

Needless to say, this conversation was going nowhere fast.  We couldn’t produce a record that we didn’t have and he wouldn’t back down.  We had a problem.  The problem was, no one could tell the guy that he was full of shit and was remembering something that didn’t happen.  This is because of the motto, “The customer is always right”.  Well I call “Bullshit” and I say we start a new movement in retail.  One where we get to tell idiots that they are idiots.  Also, we need to stop letting assholes treat store employees poorly.  But, we need the general public to start helping, because they are the ones who just sit and watch while innocent store workers are berated by poorly behaved shoppers.

Drunk Guy

A drunk man came into our store today.  This is not an unusual occurrence, but this particular guy was in a mood.  He immediately started yelling at the employees in the store.  Last week he wanted to order a “boombox”.  The one that he finally picked out was back ordered when we tried to place the order.  We let him know and told him that we would be glad to try to get a different model if he had to have it in a certain amount of time.  We two days ago he came in to pick out a new one.

At the time, he made it very clear that he was pissed about not getting the first one that he picked.  He made several comments about how incompetent we were.  He is old so we pretty much let is slide and apologized that we couldn’t get that one.  Fortunately, we found another radio that he was happy with so we placed the order right away.

Well, it seems that today he thought that he had ordered the boombox three weeks ago and he was mad that we hadn’t called him about the status of his boombox.  I have to say that by this point I had had enough.  I told him that he needed to quit yelling.  He tried to tell me that he wasn’t yelling.  So I told him that he couldn’t be in the store right now if he was going to keep acting the way he was acting.  Now he wants to act like he can’t hear me.  I told him, rather loudly, that he could leave if he couldn’t act like an adult.  Now he wants to give me a sob story about how its a Christmas present and he needs it before Christmas.  I tell him that we ordered it right after he left two days ago, not three weeks ago when he thought he had ordered it.  I also said that I would be glad to call him when it came in, but that he could come in the store acting like that.  He says ok and stumble out of the store.

The bad part for him is that some customers in the store saw all this.  They were upset about his behavior in the store.  Then the woman notices that he is getting into a vehicle to drive.  The guy could barely stand up, just imagine how he drives.  She takes out her cellphone and calls the police.  All I can think is “Oh crap!”.  I don’t know if they pulled him over, but I really hope that he doesn’t think that it was us.  Although, I don’t know if I really care if he did!

Holiday Question

I had a comment yesterday about a customer who didn’t like our holiday music.  So I have a few questions for anyone who reads this and will post a comment.

Do you like when a you go to a store that plays a continuous stream of holiday music?

Are you one of those people that like it at first, but by the time Christmas actually comes you are completely fed up with the constant bombardment of holiday music?

Do you wish that stores would just operate on a business as usual model and not play holiday music?

Do you work in a business where holiday music is played constantly and want to kill yourself by the time Christmas finally arrives?

I think that I fit rather neatly in the latter category.  There are so many horrible renditions of “Christmas Music” out there that I personally do not like.  For example, the 3rd time that you have heard a Spanish guitar rendition of “Jingle Bells”, you know that something is wrong with the world.

So if you read this, feel free to post a comment.  I don’t mind if you disagree with me, but you may want to reevaluate you decision come December 25th.

Holiday Music

I had a funny experience with holiday music that I thought I would share.  The district manager for our franchise stopped by and was a little upset that we were not playing holiday music in our store.  He doesn’t actually have any control over the music that is played, but one of the owners seems to think that we should kiss his ass.  Actually I think that she wants holiday music played in the store, but she is using him as an excuse.  She also doesn’t have to listen to the crap all day.

While the other owner of the store was out of the store (a common experience) she decided that we should play holiday music.  Needless to say the employees that had to listen to the horrible vocal and instrumental renditions of timeless holiday songs immediately began to bitch.  No for the good part.  The very first customer that came in after she turned on the holiday music said, and I quote, “How do you guys stand listening to that f#$king s%@t all day? It’s horrible!”  We immediately burst out laughing.  It really made our day to get some outside support.

Pirates of the Amazon

Jason Calacanis Twittered about this not long ago.  Pirates of the Amazon is a firefox Add-On that puts a “download for free” button/link on Amazon.com pages featuring media that is availble from Pirate Bay!  The pirate in me says, “AWESOME”!

On the other hand, the business person in me says, “I don’t know”.  I have the feeling that since it is adding the button/link to download for free as opposed to paying for the media, that it must be violating someone’s copyright.  This is certainly an area where I am torn.

My younger self would have used this in a heartbeat.  I will probably still try it out, but I will certainly not download anything.  I run a business that relies on people not getting media for free.  That said, I still think that the holders of copyrights often go too far.  Not necessarily the artist, but people who pretend that they have the artists best interests in mind.